The Availability of Indium: the Present, Medium Term, and Long Term Martin Lokanc, Roderick Eggert, and Michael Redlinger Colorado School of Mines Golden, Colorado
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The Availability of Indium: The Present, Medium Term, and Long Term Martin Lokanc, Roderick Eggert, and Michael Redlinger Colorado School of Mines Golden, Colorado NREL Technical Monitor: Michael Woodhouse NREL is a national laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy Operated by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications. Subcontract Report NREL/SR-6A20-62409 October 2015 Contract No. DE-AC36-08GO28308 The Availability of Indium: The Present, Medium Term, and Long Term Martin Lokanc, Roderick Eggert, and Michael Redlinger Colorado School of Mines Golden, Colorado NREL Technical Monitor: Michael Woodhouse Prepared under Subcontract No. UGA-0-41025-20 NREL is a national laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy Operated by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications. National Renewable Energy Laboratory Subcontract Report 15013 Denver West Parkway NREL/SR-6A20-62409 Golden, CO 80401 October 2015 303-275-3000 • www.nrel.gov Contract No. DE-AC36-08GO28308 NOTICE This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States government. 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Acronyms and Abbreviations - Nil CAGR Compound annual growth rate CIGS Copper indium gallium selenide DOE U.S. Department of Energy e Estimated EOL End of life g gram GW Gigawatt HHI Herfindahl–Hirschman Index In Indium ITO Indium-tin-oxide JORC Australasian Joint Ore Reserves Committee kg kilogram lb pound LCD Liquid crystal display LED Light-emitting diode m meter mn Million MOFCOM Ministry of Commerce (China) Mohs A scale of hardness of solids N/A Not available, not applicable ppb Parts per billion ppm Parts per million PV Photovoltaic SMG SMG Indium Resources t Tonne (metric ton) tpa Tonnes per annum tpd Tonnes per day UK United Kingdom USD U.S. dollar USGS U.S. Geological Survey wt% Percent of composition by weight wt weight iii This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications Executive Summary The Issue The demand for indium could intensify significantly if thin-film materials relying on this element—specifically, copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS) and III-V thin-films—become preferred photovoltaic (PV) materials. Yet the indium supply is potentially fragile for several reasons: • Markets for metallic forms of indium are small, (about 1000 tonnes per annum [tpa] of world production and use. Any new, widespread use could dramatically alter overall demand, which could grow faster than production capacity for up to about a decade, given the length of time needed to significantly increase production capacity. During this decade, indium prices could be high and volatile enough that thin-film manufacturers find it uncompetitive compared to competing PV materials. • Indium is currently produced almost solely as a byproduct of zinc smelting and refining.1 As a byproduct, indium benefits from sharing some production costs with its associated main product. Thus, costs of producing indium as a byproduct are undoubtedly lower than if it were produced by itself. If future demand for indium exceeds the quantities available as a byproduct, more costly sources of indium will be necessary to satisfy demand from thin-film producers, raising the possibility that indium prices could be much higher than current and recent prices. • Relevant for the long term, indium is one of the scarcer elements, at least in terms of average abundance in the Earth’s crust. Thus, even if indium were available in the short to medium term at prices making CIGS materials competitive with competing photovoltaic materials, such competitiveness could be short lived. Overall, the concern implied by these three factors is whether the availability or prices of indium constrain the expansion of thin-film materials. Fully answering this question would require detailed evaluation of its demand and supply. This study focuses only on the supply side of the question and examines the following, narrower question: If the demand for indium grows significantly, what are the likely sources of incremental production, in what quantities, and what might be the expected production costs and prices? The Approach This study examines the availability of indium from three temporal perspectives: 1 A byproduct is produced along with a main product. The main product, more specifically its prices and production costs, largely determine the commercial viability of the mining operation. The associated byproduct, in contrast, has little effect on the overall viability of the mine, although of course the price received for the byproduct must be sufficient to justify the additional costs of separating and recovering the byproduct rather than discarding it. An intermediate situation arises when more than one product importantly influences the viability of an operation; in this case, each product is a coproduct. iv This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications 1. It describes the present based on estimates of current production capacities and associated production costs. 2. It evaluates the medium term, roughly 5–20 years into the future, based on known developed and undeveloped indium resources. 3. Most speculatively, it examines the long term, beyond 20 years or so into the future, based on (a) the general relationship in the recent past between the concentration of mineral ores for a range of metals; and (b) likely future ore grades for indium. The Findings At present, indium availability has the following characteristics (based on recent data and information): • Indium reserves are an estimated 15,000 tonnes, more than two thirds of which are in China. A broader estimate, including reserves and resources, from the Indium Corporation of America (Moss et al. 2011) is total reserves and resources of approximately 50,000 tonnes, with some 47% in China and the Commonwealth of Independent States and 53% in other countries.2 • Indium is produced mainly as a byproduct of zinc, and to a lesser extent as a byproduct of copper, tin, and polymetallic deposits from mineral ores containing less than 100 parts per million (ppm) (or less than 0.01%) indium.3 We estimate that the indium content of zinc and other ores from which indium was recovered in 2013 was ~700 tonnes. Zinc ores accounted for ~90% of production. For reasons discussed later, we believe these estimates are well below the actual levels of mine production. Considering only zinc ores, mine production of indium was geographically concentrated in China, Peru, Canada, Australia, and the United States, which together accounted for more than 75% of world production in 2013. • Primary refined production of indium was ~770 tonnes in 2013 (Tolcin 2014a).4 Production over the last few years was ~600 to ~800 tpa. About half of global primary refined indium is produced in China. The remaining production is predominantly in Belgium, Canada, Japan, Peru, and South Korea. • Secondary refined production capacity was ~610 tonnes in 2013, almost all of which represents recycling of manufacturing wastes rather than recovery from end-of-life (EOL) products. Of this total tonnage, 510 tonnes (84%) occurs in or near manufacturing centers in Japan, South Korea, and China, and is recovered from spent indium-tin oxide sputtering targets used in the production of flat-panel displays. 2 A reserve is the quantity of material that is known with a high degree of certainty to exist in the Earth’s crust and can be extracted and recovered at a profit with current technologies and under current legal and regulatory regimes and current prices and production costs. As such, a reserve is only a fraction of the material in the crust. Resources of a particular material are larger than reserves in that resources represent material that is known with some degree of certainty to exist in the crust and might be technically, legally, and commercially viable to produce under some conceivable circumstances. 3 Ore is rock that contains one or more valuable minerals, from which the desired material is recovered (in this case, indium).